Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Winter in London is harsh.

The cold is biting, the rain is unrelenting and the sky is - or at least seems to be - perpetually grey. On the rare days the winter sun does manage to break through the thick cloud cover, it somehow lacks any warmth and feels artificial, as though the brightness is too much, too fake, after so long in the dark. Leaving work at six o’clock means Emily makes her way home in what feels like the actual dead of night, and when combined with the fact she gets to the office in the dark too, she cannot remember the last time she actually saw London in daylight. 

Emily finds it unbearable. 

A particularly bleak Friday night sees her shaking water from her umbrella on the steps to her apartment, back turned to the garish lights of the shops on the opposite side of the road and the steady rumble of traffic. There is a group of students clustered around a food van, none of them appropriately dressed for the weather and all of them stinking of cheep beer. Emily has always thought that London was a city of sophistication and glamour, and to a degree it is, but only on the surface and only if you stick to the right areas. Living and working somewhere means you get to see the underbelly of it, all of the darker parts that it hides away from the tourists, and now Emily is well acquainted with the true grit of the city. She knows where to look to find the gangs, the drugs and the abject misery. 

One of the famed black hackney cabs rolls through a puddle, splashing grimy water at her and jolting her out of her reverie. Swearing under her breath, Emily hurries up the front steps of her building.

Cold and damp, Emily pauses at the hallway mirror, raking her fingers through her hair to try and counter the effects of the weather, before giving it up as a bad job and shedding her blazer and shoes. The apartment is silent, bar the ticking of the clock. Once upon a time, her walking through the door would prompt a flurry of activity and a small figure in Captain America pyjamas would hurtle down the stairs of vault over the back of the sofa to fling himself into her arms. Aaron would laugh and press a kiss to her cheek or her lips or the nape of her neck - wherever her could reach, really - and Sergio would wind around her ankles. Emily feels their absence more than ever.

Alone in the kitchen, Emily pours herself a glass of Portuguese red wine, one of the best things she has discovered in her local Sainsbury’s, and considers the contents of her fridge (a broccoli, a jar of anchovies and a packet of pasta that cooks in two minutes and which upset Rossi enough that he called her to berate her in Italian for buying it). The fog presses itself against her windowpanes, so thick that it eclipses London from view, even the spires of the St Paul’s unable to be seen rising out of the mist. Ahead of her, the long hours of the evening stretch on and all Emily can think of is how empty they feel.

Sadly, this feeling is not new. 

No, the bare honest truth of the matter is that this hollowness has been with her a long time, a near constant companion. It has been with her for years, its beginning brought about by Doyle’s escape from Korea and accelerated by all that followed. Being forced to die to the life she had known and genuinely loved was brutal beyond measure, the impact not mitigated by the fact it was a fake death and a coffin filled with sandbags; it had still cut her tether from the family she had chosen for herself and left her completely alone, marooned in a foreign country. It had altered her irrevocably and Emily still hates Doyle for it, even though her anger won’t change a thing. Not now that Doyle himself is long dead, unable to touch her. 

At first, after Doyle’s death, she had been naïvely hopeful. Returning from beyond the grave - also known as Paris, where she had been left to lick her wounds in terrifying, endless isolation - was meant to be a solution, her old job offered back to her on a silver platter. And Emily wanted it to work so badly. But, despite all of her best intentions and despite trying so fiercely to slot back into her old life, Emily had known she was missing the mark, that she hadn’t been the same. The team knew it too, could see her falling short. All of them. Aaron especially. 

Sometimes, she would honestly be fine. Better than fine. Good. Aaron would plant kisses over her skin, Jack would throw his arms around her with wild abandon, or she would wake in the night to find both of the Hotchner boys pressed up against her in the bed she and Aaron shared and Emily would feel so stable, so very grounded, that everything else was just a lingering remnant of a nightmare. 

But then there were moments where Emily would know that Doyle had broken her so completely that there is no hope of repair and that the cracks he had inflicted were not healing, but instead were widening and deepening. Every day she lived with the knowledge that she could break apart at any given moment. Each time woke up screaming and wouldn't (couldn’t) tell Aaron why, each time she lost sight of Jack in public and the terror physically floored her, each time she physically balked at the idea of committing to anything all caused the same flash of hurt on Aaron’s face, quicksilver fast but not fast enough for her to miss it. 

Of one thing Emily was absolutely certain: she loved Aaron so much that it hurt. But she also knew that her behaviour was causing him to suffer. Something was making her push him away, as though she feared her own trauma was contagious. She didn’t want to - if anything she wanted to keep him close, to fold his bones to hers and never let him go - but it just kept happening and she was unable to stop it. After each slip, she would catch Aaron watching her intently, trying so hard to understand the turmoil that she was stubbornly refusing to voice and it broke her heart a little more each time. 

It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t her fault. It was all Doyle’s fault, but even recognising this didn’t help. 

In Paris, her relationship with Aaron and Jack was the only thing that had kept her warm. Thinking of the life they had shared was the thing that gave her the strength to get up each day, to try and push on even when the black heaviness of depression tried to suffocate her. They were everything good in her life, the best and brightest and most brilliant thing she had ever had.

This was why Emily had decided that this was the one thing she could not let herself fuck up. And she was going to fuck it up, she knew it. 

This fear, the fear of breaking something she held so dear, was why she had run again, why she had jumped at Clyde’s offer, packing her life into two suitcases and moving across the world. 

(She still tries not to remember the last kiss at the airport, the way it tasted of salt from too many tears and how Aaron had held her so tightly that he left the imprints of his fingerprints on her skin. That memory has become a weapon; it hurts too much to dwell on).

Everyone - Emily included, thanks to years of very expensive therapy - knows about her flight response that kicks in, her instinctive need to run when she feels trapped or scared or both. Everyone knows that, three years on, she is still struggling to come to terms with the things she has lost and that she is still grappling with the unresolved issues that stem from this. Her therapist refers to it as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, her mother calls it oppositional behaviour and Emily doesn’t call it anything. It’s easier not to name it, to just accept it is there, gnawing away in her gut and eating her from the inside out, because allocating it a label makes it feel too tangible. Too real.

For a time, London has been a solution. Interpol provides her with challenge after challenge, gives her chances to use her formidable linguistic skills and allows her to live a city that is not overshadowed by the memory of Doyle. But now it has becomes apparent that it is not a permanent solution. The familiar restlessness has begun to stir in Emily’s blood again, a physical reminder that this is not the place for her to spend the rest of her life. It is more than the lack of decent Mexican food, the near constant rain or how small and cramped London itself feels. She recognises it immediately for what it is: the same urge that has driven her from city to city, country to country, unable to settle down, craving something more. It has become so large that it’s all she can think of, especially on evenings like this one, where it has become a physical itch beneath her skin, something she needs to scratch hard enough to draw blood. 

There has only ever been one time in her life where this feeling didn’t rear its head, not even once; the brief, blissful period of time before Doyle dragged Lauren Reynolds back into existence and tried his damnedest to break Emily Prentiss in the process has been the only exception. Those halcyon years, where she had been wildly in love with Aaron, flying at work, surrounded by her family was the only period where Emily’s urge to run didn’t surface, not even once. The only time where she had stayed put and was happy to do so. 

“You need to mourn the life you lost,” her therapist tells her over and over again, especially when Emily’s longing for her old life becomes solid enough that she can feel it. “You need to move on with your life here.”

Emily tries, she really does. She throws herself into her work, has the most disappointing sex imaginable with a man she finds in a dark bar and ends up calling Aaron Hotchner the morning after, wracked with self-loathing and disgust. 

The latter turns out to be a slippery slope, something both of them are unable to stop. 

Emily’s first phone call is the bridge and soon he’s calling her too, both of them giving in to their need to speak to each other. There’s something about the familiarity of his voice, deep and whiskey smooth, when he picks up the phone and how he is happy to hear from her no matter how early or late it might be. Even better is the way they can talk about anything and everything under the sun, the way he always seems so genuinely invested in her life and the way that he has seen the very best and the very worst of her but somehow manages to love her so completely all the same.

(He doesn’t say it. Neither of them do, but they both know).

Emily relishes in how easy it is, listening to each other’s news and sharing in each other’s lives despite the miles that physically separate them and the pain she knows she has caused him. Aaron tells her about the BAU team, about Jack, about his own life and the feelings that he keeps so close to his chest, about the next triathlon he is training for. He chuckles when Emily insists that the swim will kill him this time, she can feel it.

Other times, Aaron will sigh, a sound of weariness that echoes down the line. He’ll tell her the case was rough, or that he thinks he’s failing as a father and she will listen, letting his words run their course until he has deflated and exhausted himself. She doesn’t need to ask him to know that he’s not talking to anyone else about it, that he is keeping his fears and anxieties locked up tight, yet she does anyway. 

“Aaron, have you told anyone about this?” she asks after his voice cracks when he is telling her about a case involving missing teenagers that they didn’t manage to bring home and the way he cannot get the last boy’s face out of his mind, so like Jack with his dark blond hair.  

“Yes,” Aaron says and she can hear him moving through his kitchen, trying to open a beer one handed. If she closes her eyes, she can picture him, dressed in one of his favoured jumpers, his socks dark against the tiled floor, with his shoulder pressing his phone to his ear. She waits in silence until he admits, quieter now, “I’ve told you.”

“Baby, you should talk to Dave,” Emily says, the term of endearment she used to call him all the time slipping loose before she can catch it. “It’s important to process it.”

There is a pause, Aaron’s footsteps audible as he moves through his house. Emily bites at her thumb nail until she tastes metal, wondering if she has overstepped.

“I’d rather process it with you,” Aaron says softly. “You understand.”

“Okay,” Emily says, curling herself beneath a knitted throw and settling herself down to listen. “Okay. Tell me about it.”

Their conversations gradually become the high points of Emily’s weeks and she banks up stories or news to share with Aaron with the intention of coaxing a laugh from him. It’s something she still does, trying to crack through his stern facade and then smiling softly when she hears that familiar snicker. Pathetic it may be, but hearing his amusement stokes warmth in her stomach and so Emily doesn’t care. She doesn’t even care when she notices how the way her phone calls with Aaron so often correlate with her lighter moods, the way his name appearing on her phone screen makes her heart lift, the way after they hang up - and sometimes during - she finds herself burning with a need deep in her belly, the kind can only be appeased when she slips her hand between her thighs, all the while calling his touch, his mouth and his voice to her mind’s eye.

(Sometimes, she swears he’s touching himself when they talk too. They know each other intimately, intimately enough to know the sounds the other makes when they are close to the brink, as well as just how to elicit those noises, and Emily would recognise the hum that Aaron makes low in his throat when he’s approaching his climax anywhere).

But they don’t talk about it. They don’t talk about how they are falling back into depending on each other once more, or the fact that communicating is becoming instinctive. The Atlantic Ocean might separate them, but they have still found ways to reach for each other, spurring each other on when they need it and riding both the highs and the lows together. Dangerous it may be, but Emily needs Aaron and she’s pretty sure he needs her too. 

Tonight, when her apartment’s vast emptiness taunts her, Emily calls him to just catch up. To hear his voice, to draw details from him about the life he leads, to let his presence just be a balm to her own misery. She waits until it’s a reasonable hour in DC, watching the clock and wiling away the time until she decides that he’ll have left work and she will have his full attention - or, if he hasn’t headed for home yet, she can make him. 

“I’ve got tickets to a premier league match,” she tells him when he has answered, sitting in her bath with her second glass of wine. “I’m going to see Chelsea play Arsenal. Apparently it’s a huge deal. Jack would love it. Is he still playing left wingback?”

“Oh, yes. Dave has gone full soccer mom on me,” Aaron says with a laugh and Emily grins too, able to imagine it. He’s in the car, driving home, and she can hear the familiar sounds of DC traffic down the line. “He had Jack’s team running drills. Drills, Emily. They’re ten.” 

“He is Italian. They take soccer very seriously.”

“That’s exactly what he said, almost word for word.”

Emily leans back in the hot water, head coming to rest on the porcelain of the tub as the conversation carries her along effortlessly. It’s more reassuring than anything else she has ever known to know that Aaron is here, still a fixture in her life, a familiar landmark she can turn to when she is lost. Listening to him talk, she can feel the hollowness start to dissipate, the weight of the emptiness begin to lift. And even though that familiar urge to run is still there in her bones, there is one significant difference. This time, instead of actively wanting to put as much distance as possible between them, Emily wants nothing more than to swallow her pride and return home. 

-:-

Life goes on.

Emily has settled into a holding pattern, one that she thinks she can continue to exist in for a time. It’s not what she wants, but that’s a whole other issue that is far too large for her to delve into. Whilst Emily might not be completely content, for now it’s enough to simply try and push through. 

That is until Emily gets the call. Or, she thinks, it should be referred to more accurately as The Call, the one that yanks the rug out from beneath her and sends her spiralling. 

Scratch is on the loose. 

Not just on the loose either, but actively pursuing Aaron and Jack, putting them in enough danger that Aaron does the unthinkable, the thing that he has never before been able to do. 

He gives the BAU up. 

He doesn’t just gives the BAU up either, but sends in his resignation, takes his son to ground, and drops completely out of all of their lives, Emily’s included. 

And now the FBI is on the phone to her, telling her that the BAU needs an acting Unit Chief.

“You must be desperate,” she comments, just for something to say because her head is spinning from the news that she has just heard. 

“Actually, Agent Hotchner requested you specifically,” Cruz says and Emily leans back in her chair, looking out of her office window. 

It’s early in DC, meaning speaking to her must be top of Cruz’s priority list, but it’s just past three in London and the view is impressive. Emily’s office is high enough in the Interpol building that she can see the steely ribbon of the Thames glinting in the weak sunlight. She’ll miss this view she realises, maybe more than she’ll miss anything else.

Here she is, being asked to uproot herself yet again, to return to the very place that she was hunted like prey and take over a job she has never coveted. It’s a lot for anyone to comprehend. More staggering still is the fact that Aaron, someone who prefers to internalise everything, has asked for her, has reached out to her, has chosen her as the one person he would trust to take up his mantle. 

“What do you think?” Cruz asks and Emily hears the strain in his voice.

Emily doesn’t even have to think twice before she answers. 

-:-

What surprises her the most is not her mother’s unusual interest in her decision, nor the culture shock that always comes from transitioning across continents. It’s not the much felt loss of Morgan or even being faced with an entirely new role, one she has never envied Aaron for. Actually, if anything, taking on the responsibility of Unit Chief is in many ways easier to deal with than most of the other things she finds herself having to confront after her return to the US, her own feelings included in this. Emily has always been a natural leader, after all. 

No, what surprises her the most is the way that returning to DC feels right. Like she has made a good choice, chosen the right option. 

Of course, it is different. It’s doesn’t feel like coming home. The team has changed, the city itself has changed, even the job she is expected to do has changed. But Emily was expecting all of this. She has readied herself for it, arrived braced for it.

What she wasn’t able to prepare for is the most significant, most painful difference. 

The irony of Emily returning to the US at Aaron’s request only when he has gone to ground is not lost on her and no matter how much Emily tries to ignore it, Aaron’s absence eats away at her. Even when they were separated by a body of water and several time zones, a romantic relationship impossible to maintain, neither of them had been able to cut the other off. Their phone calls, increasing in length and frequency with each week that passed, had only ensured that they came to rely on each other just as much as before Emily left. She had gotten used to being able to reach him whenever she needed to and, without Emily even realising it was happening, talking to Aaron Hotchner had become the most important part of her life. 

It had been harder at start, both of them still smarting from the abrupt end to a relationship they had thought would be forever. Emily wouldn’t have blamed Aaron if he didn’t answer, or if he told her that he didn’t want to speak to her again. But, for the first time in a years, the universe had been on her side. Aaron had seemed to understand that she was still healing, piecing herself and her life back together after Ian Doyle had torn through it like a hurricane and he had been patient with her. More than patient. Over the past year, he has gently tugged the truth from her, extricating all of the things she couldn’t tell him at the time and untangling it with her. He has listened to Emily talk, haltingly at first, about the cold dread that spurred her into movement and how, even now, she still sometimes wakes up terrified that Doyle is coming for her. She confesses her fear that he’ll never truly leave her and that she’ll wear the scars of it for the rest of her life like it’s her greatest sin and waits for his condemnation. 

it doesn’t come.

“Have you told anyone else this?” he had asked. It was the week before Scratch’s escape, a bizarre mirror of her own question months earlier, and chuckled quietly when she told him of course she had, she’d just told him. 

And even though she has caused him more pain than she suspects he will ever admit, Aaron didn’t criticise her, not once, for running away. He tells her that her scars are battle wounds, reminders of all that she has faced, badges of honour that she has won.

“You know I’m always here for you,” he had told her, his assurance steady and genuine, and Emily had held those words close to a chest, letting herself be warmed by the promise. 

But not anymore. 

Aaron is no longer here to laugh when she tells him about how she has eaten a carbonara so terrible that Rossi’s grandmother would be spinning in her grave or worrying that Jack needs a Science tutor, debating whether or not he should ask Reid to help. After bad days or horrific cases, there is no longer anyone to talk her through her options or to remind her that she is Emily Prentiss and she does not bend for anyone, doesn’t she remember sitting in his office for days to secure her place on the team? 

(“I should have known then what I was getting myself in for.” “Yes, you really should, Hotchner.”)

He’s just gone.

“I wish I could just talk to him,” Emily complains to Dave one evening, massaging her temples. They’re supposed to be building her furniture, but they’ve ended up sinking a bottle of Dave’s favourite red, the tool box unopened. “I understand that he needs to keep Jack safe, but fuck me this job is hard.”

“It’s understandable that you want to talk to him,” Dave says, topping up her wine glass without being asked. “Of course you do. Let’s face it, Emily. We all know that you and Aaron didn’t split up because you didn’t love each other anymore. He missed you every day.”

“Please,” Emily scoffs, leaning back in one of the only two chairs she has in her new house. Their case load has been so great that she’s barely unpacked and is still living out of boxes. Her favourite boots have yet to turn up and she has just accepted buying a replacement pair until she has some time to settle in. “Like he told you that. We never even told you we were together.”

Dave really starts laughing now, hard enough that he begins to wheeze. Emily watches him, vaguely concerned that he is having a full blown asthma attack, until he manages to speak, eyes streaming with tears of mirth.

“You didn’t need to tell us, Emily. Neither of you were subtle. And I know all about what you two got up to in my bathroom.”

He’s trying to make her laugh, but the memory of Aaron lips at her throat, the cool counter beneath her and  the thrill of trying to keep as quiet as possible lest they be discovered only sharpens Aaron’s absence.

“I just hope I’m doing this right,” Emily says when Dave has got nearly himself back under control, still smirking into his wine. “They’re big shoes to fill. I don’t want to let Aaron down.”

“Emily,” Dave says, suddenly as serious as he’s ever been, any trace of humour gone. “Please believe me when I say you could not let Aaron down.”

It’s not quite what Emily wants - no, she wants to hear it from the man himself, with his wisdom and the warmth he had so often shared with her - but Dave’s reassurance the best she has got. 

Besides, there’s nothing more that she can do and Emily has long since learned that wallowing achieves nothing. It won’t bring Aaron back, no matter how much she needs him.

So, Emily works. 

Tirelessly, she puts her all into each case that passes her desk, all the while working to finding Scratch so that she can bring Aaron and Jack home. To DC. To her. With each day, each week, each month, she becomes more and more confident in her role, more and more established. The team becomes her team and she is fiercely proud of them and what they achieve. 

For the first time in years, she she feels dangerously close to settled and it doesn’t make her want to up and leave. She can’t leave, not now. Not when Aaron needs her here.

But, despite all of her success, Emily still finds herself trying to fill the hole that he has left. At her lowest moments, when she thinks she would give her soul just to speak to him one more time, she finds herself scrolling back through her messages to reread the last text Aaron sent to her before Scratch disrupted their steady rhythm. It’s a little like torture but she does it anyway, reading over the words again and again even though they are already etched into her memory. It’s just something else that she can’t stop, something else she can pick at, just like her nails.

Great to talk to you tonight. Thanks for making me laugh - how could I forget just how outrageous you can be? Having burritos in the Hotchner house in honour of you tomorrow! Sleep well. Take care, Em. 

Now, after everything, it reads like a goodbye.

-:-

“What a case,” JJ mutters late afternoon when they arrive back at their hotel.

It’s grey and drizzling in Boston, wet enough that the puddles on the sidewalks reflect the artificial glow of the street lamps. They have just closed one of their harder cases involving a serial rapist, which should be a victory but their failure to save his last victim is something that Emily knows will haunt them all. The memories of the room, the blood splattered plastic wrap and the overwhelming smell of copper are hard to shake and they were all unusually quiet on the drive back through the rain slicked streets.

“Home tomorrow,” Rossi replies as they enter the hotel lobby, the marble dazzlingly white after the gloom of the day. “And a stiff drink tonight.”

“Get some rest,” Emily tells them from her position at the back, bringing up the rear. “We can reconvene for a drink in the bar when we’ve had some time to shower and pack.”

“Great idea,” Tara says fervently. 

The team head towards the elevators, shaking the weight of the case from their shoulders as they go. Emily moves to follow them, ready to have a very hot shower and a very large glass of wine, but something else captures her attention. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees someone shift, moving into her line of sight, and she glances towards the movement on instinct. It’s what she has been trained to do, after all, to be ready to respond at once to any threat.

But this is not a threat she realises. At least, she is almost certain it is not. There, lurking in the entrance of the hotel bar, is a familiar figure, so familiar that Emily thinks she would recognise him anywhere. 

Time slows to a crawl. 

Caught off guard, Emily nearly stumbles, having to right herself just before she loses her footing completely. Later, she will blame the fact that she is so thrown for her uncharacteristic reaction. She falters.

No, she thinks. No, it can’t be. 

Necessity tugs her attention away from the bar, Emily having to focus on staying upright, and when she glances back, seeking confirmation that her eyes are not playing tricks on her, the figure has gone.

And yet Emily can’t let this go. Despite her certainty that she’s mistaken, that this can’t be happening, Emily needs to see with her own eyes that the person she most wants to see isn’t lurking behind the corner, just out of her sight. She has to. It’s a seed that has been planted, blossoming before she can stop it taking root or prune it back. The possibility alone is enough to have her fall back from the others, offering an excuse about grabbing a drink from the vending machine to JJ, who is holding the elevator for her. 

“Go on,” she insists. “I’ll catch up with you guys later.”

It’s the easiest thing in the world to walk into the bar and slide onto one of the worn leather barstools, bringing her elbows to rest on the polished wooden surface. The bartender slides a menu to her but Emily barely looks at it, instead darting glances around the large room.  

There is no sign of him. 

The disappointment is bitter enough that she can taste it, acrid on her tongue. All too aware that it is her own fault for even entertaining such a foolish notion - of course he’s not here in Boston, hanging around her hotel bar - Emily grits her teeth into something roughly approximating a smile and orders a bottle of Merlot just to avoid looking like a complete fool. She can take it back to her room and have a glass in the bath, taking an hour to feel sorry for herself before she chalks it up to exhaustion and makes herself to move past it.

Outside, the heavens finally open and unleash the downpour that has been threatening all afternoon, the rain lashing against the windows. It’s almost biblical, so strong that it is impossible to see beyond the deluge. Emily looks over her shoulder and, using the water hitting the glass as a cover, he appears at her side, silent as a ghost, face obscured by the the hood of his dark coat. 

Emily is aware of her presence before she claps eyes on him. She feels him beside her and twists to face him, chest tight and eyes wide.

She was right. He is here, close enough to touch. If she stretches out, her fingers will meet flesh and bone. 

For a few seconds, she can’t speak. There are no words with enough magnitude, no words that could possibly be sufficient in this situation. When he looks down at her, his eyes are dark and unflinching, boring into her. The intensity of it makes her freeze, trapping her in his orbit so completely that she couldn’t look away even if she wanted to. 

Thankfully, the combination of Emily’s time as a spy and her years with the FBI have sharpened her reflexes, honed them to a wicked point. She is quicker than most would be to pull herself together after a shock, able to tamp it down and jolt herself back into movement. She makes a show of passing a twenty to the bartender before picking up the bottle of wine, tucking it beneath her arm. Only when she turns away from the bar does she speak, head angled so that her hair swings in a dark curtain, hiding her face. 

“Room 294,” Emily says, voice so low it is only just audible before she heads for the elevators, her heels clicking on the marble floor of the lobby.

The entire ride in the elevator, Emily can feel her heart thundering in her chest. Her palms are slick with sweat and slip on the glass of the bottle, an irritating way of her body betraying her nerves. She’s in the process of unlocking her door when he appears again, striding down the corridor with that familiar purpose. He has l taken a surprisingly short time to arrive at her room. As she fumbles, he reaches to take the wine from her, his smile sudden and warm.

“Service elevator. Didn’t want to be seen coming up with you.”

They manage to wait until they are inside the room, but the minute the door locks, Aaron Hotchner has her in his arms. 

Emily barely has time to react but on instinct she buries her face in his neck, inhaling the familiar woodsy scent of him. There’s something agonisingly comforting in the fact that he still smells the same, still uses the same laundry detergent, still wears the same dark green fleece that he loved and that she can see peeking out of his coat.

“What are you doing here?” Emily asks, voice muffled by his shoulder. 

“Saw you on the news,” Aaron replies, drawing back so that he can smooth a hand over her hair. He’s looking at her with that old intensity, the kind that she remembers from Sunday mornings at home when their time together seemed to stretch out forever or, sometimes, on the jet after days spent sleeping apart when he wanted nothing more than her. “You were so close and I-”

“Stop,” Emily says, interrupting him before he can finish. “I need you to think very carefully before you go any further.”

Aaron waits for her to continue, head cocked, warm and solid and so very present before her. It makes it hard to think, to process properly, when all she wants to do is fling herself into his embrace, consequences be damned. But Emily is all to aware that Aaron’s very presence in her hotel, his taking her in his arms, his lips inches from hers are all part of a promise that is just waiting to be broken. She has already loved and lost him three times. Having a taste of his affection only for him to drop off the face of the earth once more is just too much. She cannot do it again. Even the thought of it makes her chest ache, as though someone is holding her heart in an iron grip.

“You can’t stay,” Emily tells him firmly, her voice stronger than it should be when all she can think about is how she wishes she hadn’t interrupted him. His unfinished sentence taunts her and she wants to hear why he has materialised in her hotel when he should be hiding. She wants to kiss him and not even come up for air. She wants to tell him that she should never have left him, that she should have stayed. But she also knows that, in the long run, none of these things will help either of them and so she lets practicality and self preservation win out. Resolutely, she soldiers on. “No matter what happens or what is said right now, you will have to leave and go back to wherever your life is now. I understand, I do, but I don’t know when or if I will get to see you again. Please. Don’t make this harder than it already will be.

Don’t break me, she thinks, knowing it’s selfish.

Aaron looks down at her, brows drawn together in one of his familiar frowns, bringing his hand up to cup her face. The tenderness of the gesture means that Emily knows before he speaks that he will go along with her request, that he understands. She can see it in his eyes. He too has a heart to guard, after all. 

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“You were so close,” Aaron says, repeating his words from earlier but he leaves it there, ends his sentence without bringing his own emotions into it and Emily feels that tightness at her breast loosen a little.

His words are still an arrow to the heart. So close. She hadn’t even known.

”How did you even know where to find me?”

”You underestimate me. I’ve done your job. It wasn’t hard to profile which hotel was close enough to the field office and within the budget.”

“It’s so dangerous,” Emily whispers, unabashedly drinking in all of the details she has so missed: the dark slash of his brows, the mole on his cheek, the silvery scar on the underside of his jaw. “If you would work it out…”

She’s counselling care, but she can already feel herself preparing to throw any notion of caution to the wind. Even if she and Aaron don’t voice their feelings - even if they pretend that this means less than everything to them - their actions give them away completely. The fact Aaron is here, holding her like she’s made of glass, speaks for itself. Besides, it’s been too long, too long without seeing him, too long to go without hearing his voice for Emily to be anything even close to sensible or restrained. Her self control is good, but it’s not that good. 

“I know,” Aaron’s fingers are light as they skate over her cheekbones, as though he needs to commit her to his memory by touch alone. 

This could ruin her. Emily knows it; something in the back of her mind is screaming at her in warning. They are both being selfish, in their own ways - Aaron, for coming here, for giving her a taste of what they could be, and her for not being stronger, for going along with it. But, after everything, surely they must be entitled to this. Surely. 

Too perceptive by half, Aaron seems to pick up on the way she is wavering and holds her closer. He actually used to enjoy her complaining about his irritating accurate intuition, smirking down at her, too smug by half. Anyone would think I study human behaviour for a living. Retiring from the FBI hasn’t made him forget, Emily thinks. He hasn’t lost it. He hasn’t lost his ability to see through her.

Now, he lowers his head, his nose brushing her cheek.

“Just for one night.”

It hangs between them. A time limit. One night only. A brief reprise in a story they both thought had ended, a relationship that they have both been forced to mourn. Whilst Emily knows that they cannot claw their old relationship back, she also understands that this night won’t be an opening to that. She isn’t allowed to know where Aaron is, what he’s doing, how Jack is. Even the name he goes by now is an unknown, and she cannot bring herself to use his, not out loud, just in case. It’s paranoia and and preservation, muddled together. 

But this is not an offer of a relationship. It’s not a return to shared coffee mugs and sleepy kisses in the morning and secrets whispered under the cover of night. He is not promising her that. This is not a golden third chance. No, they are not afforded that. This is a selfish opportunity to have each other one last time, nothing more and nothing less. 

Still, it’s more than Emily has even dared to dream of and therefore she can’t say no. She cannot refuse herself this.

Now, when she and Aaron share a look, it speaks of the understanding they established long ago. It conjures a sense deja vu, a reminder that they used to do this all the time. They would communicate silently across busy rooms, bustling precincts, over the bent heads of their friends, holding wordless conversations that only they could understand. Without even realising what they were doing, Emily and Aaron established their own language of sorts, something just for them. 

This look, shared in a Boston hotel room as the rain pours outside, is an agreement. They are on the same page.

Each moment they wait to decide has become precious time slipping through their fingers. Here, wedged between Aaron’s chest and the wood of the door, Emily is conscious of each second they waste. Neither of them has a crystal ball; they don’t know when or how Scratch will be caught. It could be months, even years, and there is no guarantee on when they will see each other again. 

If they will see each other again.

It’s this uncertainty that pushes her to her answer. This, whatever this might be, is better than nothing.

“Okay,” Emily says, curling her fingers in the collar of his coat. 

Her reward is one of Aaron’s genuine smiles, the one that crinkles the skin around his eyes and brings his dimples out, and then he’s kissing her like he is a drowning man and she is his oxygen. 

The wine is discarded on the counter and Aaron has her flush against the door, his lips leaving a searing trail over the exposed skin of her collarbones. Emily tips her head back, letting him lead, remembering just how good it feels to have Aaron’s touch igniting her very skin. Under his coat and fleece, which she tugs over his head and tosses to one side, the fabric of his dark polo shirt is draped over the swell of his muscles. He’s wearing the leather belt that Emily remembers buying him years ago, back when he was hers and it’s so easy to pretend that this is still the case as she unfastens the buckle, suddenly desperate to feel all of him. 

“Emily,” Aaron says, her name sounding almost reverential as he places two fingers beneath her chin, calling her out of her own head. 

Looking up at him, Emily can see the undisguised hunger in his eyes as he stares at her and she feels her own desire spike through her in response. She can’t remember that last time someone gazed at her with such overt longing, nor the last time someone’s very touch made her burn with lust. It’s scalding her from the inside, the heat of it blistering, but all she can think of is how much more of this she wants.

“I apologise in advance,” Aaron tells her, tugging her shirt open and immediately lowering his head, mouthing kisses over the valleys and slopes of her breasts. 

“What for?” Emily asks, voice husky as Aaron’s lips ghost over the scar where a four leaf clover once lay. He never once has shied away from her battle scars and Emily loves him all the more for it.

“I’m not going to last very long,” Aaron says, already working the buttons on her pants. 

The sound Emily makes when his fingers slip beneath her underwear is wholly indecent and it makes Aaron’s smile turn feral.

They divest each other of clothes, casting aside shed layers without any thought for where they land, fingers growing more and more frantic in their need to feel skin on skin. Emily moves to protest when Aaron lifts her, leaning her against the door, because they’re older now and surely this is too much. But there’s something in the way he looks at her that silences her, something so fierce and primal that Emily arches her back instead, allowing him a better angle. She’s anticipating a burn when he presses into her, but it doesn’t come. Her body is open and eager, completely ready for him, and Aaron groans in response, hot against her collarbone, as her fingers bite into his shoulders. 

Despite the desperation of their movements and the way they are holding each other a little too tightly to not leave the imprints of their fingers on the other’s skin, Emily can feel something sparking in her chest. It’s large and explosive, wildly uncontrollable. With each surge of Aaron’s hips, it builds, driving all of the uncertainty and fear out and leaving something tender and so very dangerous in its place. 

Aaron presses his lips at Emily’s bared neck at the spot that sends hot shivers down her spine just as someone knocks on her door. They both freeze, trying to regain control of their heaving breathing in the suddenly too quiet room. 

“Em?” JJ calls and Emily suddenly feels that the wooden door is not enough distance between them right now, not when she is sweat slick and held up by Aaron’s arms.

Another knock, and Emily can see the strain on his face as he tries not to move.

“Emily, we’re going to the bar for drinks,” Tara calls, her voice turning sing-song. “A nice big glass of your favourite wine…”

Emily has always loved the thrill that comes with pushing limits and that means that this is too good of an opportunity to miss. It’s too tempting. She waits until Aaron makes eye contact with her before she deliberately tilts her hips, forcing their position to change so that Aaron is suddenly seated deep inside her. He shudders silently, eyes closing briefly as she smirks, his hold on her suddenly bruising.  

Mere inches away, JJ and Tara are deciding she must be in the shower and that they’ll text her their plans, but Emily is barely listening. All she can feel is Aaron, the way he fills her so completely, the sense of being as close as is it humanly possible to be.

Aaron manages to wait about ten seconds after their voices have faded before his hips snap forward again and again, his rhythm relentless, driving them both onwards. The edges of Emily’s line of vision goes fuzzy, her own body coiled tight around him, barely able to remember her name, her first language or even the need to be quiet. 

“You- are- terrible-“ Aaron grinds out before scraping his teeth over her sternum.

Emily doesn’t see her own orgasm coming. It hits her with the force of a train, crashing through her and it sends Aaron toppling over the edge too, gasping her name into her skin.

“Actually,” Emily informs him when she has come back to herself, “I feel that you describing that as anything short of sublime is selling me rather short.”

He laughs easily, then immediately teases her when he sets her down and she wobbles on her own legs but she just tugs him down onto the bed, stretching out next to him. They are silent for a few minutes, listening to the incessant drumming of the rain and their own breathing returning to normal. There is no need for words right now, not really, and it’s enough to feel his solid warmth next to her, the press of his palm against her fevered skin. 

But moments like this do not last. It doesn’t take long for Aaron to push her hair from her eyes, drop a kiss on her cheek and shift to take stock of her room, trying to glean information about her from it.

“I thought you didn’t condone working in bed,” he says lightly, gaze lingering on the tablet and stack of crime scene notes on her bedside table.

Emily rolls her eyes at him. “My point was that you shouldn’t be working in bed when you have someone half naked and more than willing to jump your bones next to you, no. Alas, that is not an issue I have been confronted with as of late.”

“You haven’t changed,” Aaron says and he’s laughing but, somehow, he manages to look so very sad at the same time. He slides his fingers into her hair and presses his forehead to hers, but not before Emily has glimpsed the naked longing on his face. He keeps looking at her like this and it makes her feel weak.

“Well, why meddle with perfection?” 

“Why indeed?” 

Emily knows they’re both working overtime to keep their conversation light and easy, even though she wants nothing more than to know anything and everything about Aaron’s life now. There’s a whole part of his life that he’s doing differently and which she is not privy to, a domestic life that he had refused to participate in when Haley had asked but which he had stepped into unhesitatingly for his son. Emily wants to know about it so badly that it hurts.

Yet she doesn’t ask because, of all the people in the world, Emily knows how this works. Leaving your entire life behind is a sacrifice you make for the people you love. In a way, it’s like dying to your old self and you have to accept it, no matter how much it hurts or how much you might long for the very thing you have had to give up. Emily lived through it herself in Paris, when she was so very alone and so very homesick for the people she had run for once and would run for again, all the while knowing they were still out there. Knowing too that she could go to them, but in doing so she would be putting all of them in terrible danger.

The same is true for Aaron and Jack. They are at risk, enough that they cannot be Aaron and Jack Hotchner anymore. If Emily pushes for information and if Aaron caves and tells her, they will be compromised and Emily will not let that happen. So, her questions sit in her chest and Emily tries to ignore the weight of them, even when it feels like it’s hard to breathe. 

Aaron, however, is not held back from asking her anything. 

“How’s being back in DC?” 

He has started twisting a piece of her hair around his fingers, watching her face closely, trying to profile her. There it is again, she thinks. That open yearning for more than they have is written across his features. 

“Strange,” Emily scrunches up her nose. “Rossi helped me sort out a house that is really nice - big rooms and airy, so it doesn’t feel claustrophobic, you know? I liked London, but there just came a point when it was too much, so cramped with everyone living on top of each other. Although, I do kind of miss driving stick.”

“Why?”

“You have more control over the car.”

He laughs and her heart skips a beat. “Em, that is purely psychological and also says a lot about your need to be in control than anything else.”

“How does that phrase go? Once a profiler…”

Aaron peppers her with question after question, hanging onto each answer like a lifeline. He clearly thirsts for news of the team, about JJ’s boys and Rossi’s cooking lessons, about whether or not Emily still loves dancing and tequila. Wants to hear about how awful her hangovers are now, how she hasn’t smoked in over two years, how she can now sleep through more and more nights without Ian Doyle haunting her dreams. He asks if there is a man in her life now with hesitation and cannot disguise his relief when she says no, of course not.

When he kisses her, he kisses her like it’s the last time. 

They know each other so well that falling back together is as easy as breathing. Time is so often unkind, infamous for its cruelty as it snatches memories from people and leaves them reaching for something that has been worn away into nothingness, but this is something Aaron has not forgotten. Aaron still remembers exactly how to take her apart and take her apart he does, bringing her to the the point that she thrashes to try and stop the building crescendo of pleasure from taking over her completely. Emily can see the pride he takes in himself, in the fact he still exactly how to touch her, playing her body with the grace and finesse of a pianist. 

“Come for me, Em,” Aaron instructs her when she is almost feverish beneath his touch, writhing against his hand when he crooks his fingers inside her just so. She’s trying to hang onto the last semblance of control, but her hips buck of their own accord and stars bloom before her eyes. “Let go.”

And she does. Like it’s really that simple. His words send her spiralling over the edge, her entire body convulsing at his command, like it’s been waiting for him to tell her to do just that. Emily is practically panting and it would be so terribly undignified if it wasn’t Aaron watching her, eyes dark with undisguised lust as Emily’s blood roars in her ears.

“Now,” she demands, reaching for him and he responds at once. 

When he slides into her again, it is just as urgent as before and Emily actually whimpers. It’s been so long since she wanted someone like this, since she let herself give in to such carnal desire, since she truly lost control. It feels good. So good. 

Each snap of his hips stokes that white-hot fire inside her, banking the flames, encouraging them to greater and greater heights. In response, Emily takes great satisfaction in digging her heels into the small of Aaron’s back, just the way she knows sends him wild, and watching his eyes squeeze shut as a result of it, drawing another moan from him. Without her even needing to ask, his hand slips back between them and Emily is completely powerless to stop another orgasm taking her. She can feel Aaron gasping her name into her neck and she has to physically choke down his own name, the one she has been so careful to avoid using, which comes so readily to her tongue. 

Returning from her high is slow and, when she does, she finds Aaron looking down at her with something like awe on his face.

“I know,” she says dryly, catching him staring. “I am exceptional in bed.”

Aaron’s laugh is genuine and delighted. 

“God, I miss you,” he tells her, tugging her onto his chest where she lies boneless, fingers tracing patterns over his torso. 

“Don’t,” Emily tells him, tightening her hold on him. “Please. You’re leaving in the morning.”

She feels him sigh, but he doesn’t push the point. They don’t have the time to fight, not on a time limit and the ticking clock makes them greedy, desperate to make the most of the precious little hours they have left.

They can’t stop touching each other. Each time they come together is different, too. At the start of the evening, against the door because the bed was just too far away, they were frantic, but as the night slips by, they become increasingly gentle. Aaron traces her scars and makes love so tenderly that something potent burns in Emily’s throat. He wakes her when she has dozed off by kissing her shoulder blade and then sliding down between her thighs, his stubble rough against the sensitive skin. She climbs on top of him, knees bracketing his hips, and swallows down his moan by covering his mouth with hers.

Each touch is loaded with something they dare not say, but the realisation hits her when he’s buried deep inside her, their fingers intertwined above her head. She can’t tell him now - she’s not a hypocrite, and so cannot be the one who breaks the embargo she imposed on discussing feelings - so she holds it in her mind and tries to press the very thought of it into him with each fierce kiss. 

When Aaron kisses her back with equal fervour, Emily thinks he knows. 

“Do you remember when we went to the beach in the summer?” Aaron asks her at one point. The rain has stopped and the night is quiet. He’s wrapped around her like a cloak, his torso to her back, forehead leaning against her shoulder blade. “The three of us?”

The memory flashes before Emily’s eyes: the crisp, salt sodden towels, the smell of sea air in the wind, the sound of Jack’s laughter as he raced through the wide open rooms of the house they had rented. He had been so small, small enough to be carried back from the beach with his arms linked tightly around her neck. They had eaten fresh fish every day, played in the sea until their skin shrivelled and pruned, and each night they had tumbled into the large bed, so happy that they were almost weightless.

“Of course. We had too much tequila on the second to last night and you spent most of the last day kind of green.”

“Not all of us are hardened drinkers.”

“Weakling,” Emily laughs softly and she feels Aaron’s smile against her skin. “Why did you bring it up?”

“We were far enough away from the city that we could see the stars. Really see them, you remember?” Aaron murmurs and Emily turns into his embrace, searching through the darkness for the gleam of his eyes. 

“I remember.”

She does. The night he’s referring to is ingrained into her memory: the unforgiving decking of the back porch rough against her thighs, the shimmer of the stars against the ink black sky, Aaron’s limbs tangled with hers as he stared down at her with wonder, like he had never seen anything like her before. There, with the moon high in the sky behind him and humid night air syrup thick against her bare skin, Aaron had let words of love slip from him for the first time. It’s one of her most treasured memories, one that she wishes her could bottle and preserve forever. 

“I think about it all the time.”

He’s being careful not to say too much, to avoid names and places and the things she has explicitly forbidden him from saying, but he’s still telling her something, sharing something with her that she can hold onto. Emily doesn’t rebuke him, but pulls him closer and kisses him.

How Emily wishes that this could be different, that they could cling onto the people they had been in that moment. They had been so young then, still sneaking around like teenagers, stumbling into one of the BAU store cupboards in the middle of the day just because they could. They had been so happy before their tragedy had begun, where no matter how hard they try, all they get is this. Aaron seems to understand the tears that threaten and he gathers her in even closer, so close that there is no space left between them. 

In vain, Emily wishes that this night could last forever. 

Morning comes too soon and the breaking of dawn, marked by the horizon turning to liquid amber, leaves Emily feeling hollow once more. 

Aaron gets up ridiculously early to shower and, refusing to accept that the hourglass has run dry, Emily seizes the chance to slip in with him, the tiles cold beneath her back as Aaron crowds her back against the wall. There is an ache between her thighs and her muscles are weary, but it doesn’t stop her from having him one last time, trying to prolong the inevitable.

“You’re tired,” Aaron tells her after they are both spent, leaning together to hold each other up beneath the hot spray of the water. “You’ve had a long week and a difficult case. You need to sleep.”

“Don't,” Emily insists, even though her eyes are heavy and gritty with exhaustion. 

Perhaps this is why she finds her usual stubbornness failing her when she sits back on the bed, having slipped into Aaron’s polo shirt that they had tossed aside only twelve hours earlier. They haven’t addressed the fact he’s getting ready to walk back out of her life, even though the grim reality of it is practically tangible. Emily pulls the covers around her and waits, a sense of dread settling in her stomach. 

Sitting up in the bed at an uncomfortable angle was meant to keep her awake, but it doesn’t stop her from slipping into an uneasy half-sleep, Stil propped up and in a position that will kill her neck. She vaguely reaches for consciousness when Aaron kisses her, hair still damp and smelling like hotel shampoo.

“Be careful,” she says blearily, clutching briefly at his cuff and blinking so that he comes into focus. It’s the closest she can come to saying what she really wants to, held back by her own verdict. “I - Look after yourself.”

“Em,” Aaron says, lips at her brow. He sounds grim and serious, but Emily can hear his abject misery shining through that single syllable of her name. “Be safe. Be happy.”

Again, neither of them say it. It doesn’t matter, in some ways; they don’t need to. They can feel it in the air between them. Emily can’t help but wonder if Aaron would stay if she went back on her decision and gave voice to the thing they are shying away from. She imagines him smiling and climbing back into bed with her, curling around her like a comma, promising to stay. 

It’s unfair to even consider it, though. Aaron didn’t leave because he wanted to. He left because he had to, because he has a responsibility to his son. So, Emily has to content herself with one last fleeting kiss before Aaron opens the door, his brow furrowed when he glances back at her alone in the bed, still wearing his stolen shirt. 

Goodbye seems so insignificant, so Emily doesn’t say anything as the door closes behind him. 

The room is very quiet in his absence, so quiet that it makes her claustrophobic. The silence presses down on her. All Emily can do is crawl over to the side of the bed he had slept on, trying to cocoon herself in his scent for just a little longer. If she closes her eyes and breathes in deeply, she can conjure the image of him one last time, here with her. 

In the half-light of the hotel room, sweat-stained sheets tangled around her, Emily Prentiss lays down her armour and, for the first time in months, allows hot tears to slip down her cheeks without dashing them away. 

-:-

At the airport, they wait for the jet to be ready, all of them squeezed around a table in the little cafe. Emily looks at the golden pastries and bacon sandwiches behind the counter and feels vaguely nauseous. Even the usually comforting bitter smell of the coffee doesn’t appease her unsettled stomach. Fragile enough that she thinks she might just break apart at any moment, Emily would like to blame the lack of sleep but the hard reality is that this is all self inflicted. She feels like shit because of the emotional turmoil she has just put herself through and now she is trying for stoicism, refusing to let herself give in. Like clockwork, she has risen at half seven, scraped her hair into a ponytail and refused to acknowledge the fact Aaron could have ripped out her heart right out of her chest and it would have caused her less pain than him leaving all over again. 

“I need more coffee,” JJ announces, crumpling her paper cup and waving to flag down a waitress. Emily tries not to grimace.

“Late night?” Rossi asks, brows raised. “Did you drink the bar out of wine after I left?”

“I wish,” JJ mutters as a second cup is placed before her. Before the waitress has even withdrawn her hand, JJ is tearing open two sugar sachets. Sitting next to her, Emily can see the tell-tale dark smudges beneath her normally bright eyes, signs of a broken night. “Some couple on my floor seemed to be having an all night sex extravaganza. And I’m talking about all night. They must have been at it for hours.”

“I heard them too!” Luke says. “Second floor, right? I had to put my headphones on to drown them out. I’d be surprised if the woman could walk this morning.”

“Charming,” Tara says dryly. 

Rossi, who was the only member of the team to have a room on the third floor, laughs and JJ groans in response, hunched over her coffee.

Emily, who is so tired that she can barely see straight, would usually feel a twinge of shame at the fact her colleagues have heard her having sex, but even the fact that, unbeknownst to them, the team are now discussing her sex life in the middle of an airport cafe barely breaks through the fog of her tiredness and misery. All she does is choke down a large swig of her own coffee, waiting for it to have some effect and trying not to gag. 

“Where were you last night, Em?” Tara asks, changing the subject when she  turns to face Emily. “We came to see if you wanted a drink but you didn’t answer.”

“Sorry. Must have been in the shower,” Emily says blithely. Dimly, she wonders if she should be more worried at how easily the lie springs to her tongue, but dismisses it almost immediately. It’s necessary. By telling this lie, she is keeping Aaron safe. “And then I went to bed. It was a tough case.”

No one can argue with this.

When they board the jet twenty minutes later, Emily takes the single chair that Aaron so often occupied on the flight home and leans her head against the window, seeking solitude that she can sink into. 

Leaving Boston should bring relief, a chance to go home and move past a case that didn’t end the way she had hoped, yet instead all she can think about is leaving Aaron. Somehow, in the light of day, their encounter has taken on a dream-like quality, disputed by the tiny physical reminders that he has left behind: the tacky remnants of him on the inside of her thighs, the tenderness at places his fingers had gripped, the marks his teeth had left on her collarbone. 

It’s precious little to hold onto, but it’s all that Emily’s got. 

-:- 

Ten weeks later, they take down Scratch. 

It has been ten weeks of hell. Actual, living hell. 

In all of her life, time as a spy included, Emily has never felt so overwhelmed, so unwell, or so terrified. The fear is constant, leaving her nauseous to the point that after visiting Reid in prison Emily actually finds herself throwing up what feels like everything she has ever eaten on the side of the road, one hand on the chain link fence for support. Her pride means that she will never admit this lapse to anyone, swilling her mouth out with bottled water and eating half a packet of mints on her way back to the office to disguise what she perceives as a moment of weakness.

All she can do in this situation is battle on, desperately trying to find a way out of this for all of them.

“Aaron left me in charge of the team,” she says to Rossi at one point, holed up in his office late into the night, her finger nails picked until they are red raw. “And now Reid’s in prison and I’m fucking powerless to do anything-“

“We will get him out,” Dave assures her, gripping her tightly by the shoulders and forcing her to meet his dark gaze. “You will get him out.”

Somehow, Emily manages it. She lays her career on the line, but she gets Reid out of prison and brings him home. There is a brief flash of victory, blazing and bright, but this is all too abruptly snatched away when Scratch ambushes them, kills Stephen and takes her hostage, pumping her full of drugs and, in the ultimate violation, messing with her own thoughts. 

He doesn’t succeed in breaking her, however, and now it’s the team’s turn to come for her. It’s not the first time, and Emily doubts it will be the last, but she is so very grateful when she finds them solid and there, staggering into Reid’s arms and asking him to stay with her because she’s terrified of what he might do should he get his hands in Scratch.

Even after they have exited the building, Emily hanging off Reid like she will never let him go, and have seen Scratch’s broken body on the ground it still doesn’t feel real. All of the pain and fear do not dissipate at the sight of the corpse the way she had expected them to and instead Emily just sways, held up by Reid and JJ’s hands.

“Emily. You need to be checked out,” JJ tells her firmly. 

“I’m fine-“

“You’ve been abducted and drugged.”

“I’ll be fine.”

She isn’t sure why she’s protesting so much and she isn’t sure why no one is listening to her, guiding her towards the paramedics despite her own insistence that she is alright. Reid has to half lift her up into the vehicle with strength that shouldn’t surprise her and yet which somehow does.

“It doesn’t feel real,” Emily mutters as she is eased down onto the gurney. “I don’t feel real.”

“This is why-“ JJ begins, but she doesn’t get to finish the sentence when Emily proceeds to vomit spectacularly, her entire body convulsing as JJ smoothes her hair back from her sticky forehead. 

A flash of credentials at the hospital gets her rushed through, taken to the same ward as Rossi. It’s a bit of a blur, to be honest, where Emily is in and out of lucidity, only just aware of the people around her. She knows that Rossi tries to come into her room, only for him, Reid and JJ to all be shooed straight back out. Their concern is sweet, but Emily is oddly grateful for the chance to be alone, for the opportunity it provides to drop the responsibilities that come with leadership and to just wait for the room to stop spinning. 

“How are we doing in here, Agent Prentiss?” a male voice asks and Emily has to struggle to focus on the doctor who has appeared in the doorway, the wooziness so great that even lifting her head feels like a challenge. 

It takes her a minute, but the first thing Emily notices about him is that he is young and the second is that he has a kind smile. He busies himself consulting her charts before he shines his flashlight into her eyes, noting things down on his clipboard as he goes. 

Emily is so tired, the kind of weariness that sits deep in her bones, that she doesn’t even argue, something she recognises as an immediate warning sign. Normally, she doesn’t hide her dislike of doctors and their endless questions and their prodding fingers, but the fight has left her today. It’s been a long war she has fought and the fact that it is finally at an end makes it so much easier to admit defeat, simply sitting back and letting all of the attention happen to her. Only when he has finished with her, standing to her left and flipping through her file, does she begin to feel less like she has been stuffed in a washing machine for a spin cycle. 

“The good news is that the chemicals that were used will have no lasting impact on you,” the doctor tells her when he has finished hooking her up to an IV. “And they won’t have any impact on the baby either. We just need to get some fluids into you, as you’re quite dehydrated and then we can run some final checks.”

His words take a few seconds longer to register than they should. Even when they do, Emily can do nothing more than blink at him. She’s sluggish, wading through mud, trying to pull herself from this haze of shock and into action.

“Baby?”

Her mouth feels like it has been filled with cotton wool. One word is all she can manage, her voice a good octave higher than it should be, her free hand instinctively pressing to her abdomen. It doesn’t feel any different and surely - surely - if she was pregnant she would have known. She would have known.

The doctor’s reaction is so extreme that it’s almost comical. His eyes widen and immediately he is talking but his words are lost to her. All Emily can hear is white noise, eclipsing anything else. Her chest is tight making it harder to get enough air to her lungs as, piece by piece, events from the last two and a half months slot into place. 

The nausea, which she had chalked up to stress and the upset of Reid’s imprisonment. 

The fact she has been battling the strangest food aversions, even the smell of Luke’s chicken salad sending her from the room gagging. 

The exhaustion that she has been unable to shake, no matter how early she goes to bed.

“Oh,” she says, breathless. “That can’t be right. I’m too old-“

Obviously not, though. 

Hysteria is rising, a tsunami building within her that threatens to carry her away completely. She can hear it in her voice, the strange gasping sounds that she cannot stop rattling up from her chest no matter how hard she tries.  

“I-“ the doctor begins and then swallows, looking so uncomfortable at having sprung this news on her that Emily would have laughed if she wasn’t so thrown. Already, she can see him preparing to retreat from the room, to haul someone else in to talk to her, to make this someone else’s problem. “Let me go and get-“ 

“No,” she interrupts and now she’s pushing herself off the bed, ignoring how her legs are still wobbly beneath her. “You have to tell me. Are you sure?”

The cannula in her arm, connecting her to some kind of fluid, holds her back and Emily reaches for it, ready to tug it straight out of her vein. Part of her knows she’s acting irrational, but all of her usual logic is gone. It has been a long time since total, absolute fear took her like this, sweeping her along in the flood, and only now does she remember how debilitating it is. How much is clouds her over, how it makes her flail. 

“Stop, please, Agent Prentiss,” the doctor urges, moving towards her. “You need to stay in bed.”

Emily is not one to give in to the will of others so easily - Aaron used to tell her that she is as unbendable as steel and she would laugh, proud of it - and she doesn’t listen to to the doctor now, instead giving him one of her patented hard stares, the kind she has used on serial killers and worse, until he quails. 

“It came up in your blood work,” the doctor says, clearly deciding he has a better chance of getting her off her feet if he answers her. “It’s standard procedure to run it when a new patient comes in and yours flagged up that you’re pregnant, Agent Prentiss. About ten weeks. I thought you’d know.”

For a good thirty seconds, Emily simply stares at the doctor, unable to even understand her own thoughts. They’re moving too fast to process, jagged and loud, pressing against the inside of her skull. Then, out of nowhere, she is falling, only saved from hitting the floor by the doctor’s quick reflexes when he steps forward to catch her. 

Someone must hit the alarm button at some point because there is an immediately flurry of activity in her room, including Rossi, Reid and JJ, all of whom burst in when they see the sudden influx of medical personnel rushing into the room. 

“Emily!”

She is back in bed now, unsure of how she got here and consumed with anxiety. All the can think about is the baby, these two words echoing around her head on a loop. When thinks about what she has been through in the last ten weeks - what she has put the baby through - she feels physically sick.

The baby, the baby, the baby, the baby, the baby- 

Not the baby, she thinks to herself. Aaron’s baby.

Aaron’ baby.  Aaron, who is still in witness protection, completely and utterly unreachable, hundreds of miles away from them. Them, because now that Emily is holding another life within her it will always be them now. She is no longer just Emily, but part of a pair. A unit. Emily and the baby, hers and Aaron’s baby, their baby.

Their baby, who Emily is currently solely responsible for. 

And over the last few weeks, she has barely been taking care of herself, too consumed by the need to take Scratch down to even notice the fact her body has been changing. She’s been chasing UnSubs, working unholy hours and, to cap it all off, has just been kidnapped and drugged by a vengeful psychopath, all the while as she grows another person.

Fuck. 

“Are you alright, kiddo?” Rossi asks, ignoring Emily’s doctor as he crosses to her side, searching her face for an answer. 

“I tried to get out of bed,” Emily tells them by way of explanation. She has to hide her trembling hands in her lap. “And I shouldn’t have.” 

They know her well enough that they recognise there is truth in this, that Emily would insist on being on her feet when it would certainly be more beneficial for her to not be. After all, it’s certainly not the first time she has wilfully ignored medical advice, too often brushing it off and arguing savagely until she is forced to relent, acquiescing to the doctor’s orders with barely concealed annoyance. 

Somewhere in the middle of all of chaos, her doctor slips away, using the distraction as a chance to make his escape. Emily doesn’t notice until he’s gone, the room so full of other people that it feels cramped, and she feels a grim tug of satisfaction that she has effectively scared him away.

“Are you okay?” JJ asks, her gaze too sharp. 

“Stop profiling me,” Emily says, because she cannot discuss this. Not yet. Not when there is a chance she’s fucked everything up. “I’m fine.”

They take some convincing, all of them inclined to hover around her, concern practically radiating from them. 

“JJ and Reid, you both need to go and finish getting checked out. Rossi, you should be resting,” Emily finally tells them firmly, dredging up her best Unit Chief voice. “I’m fine. I’ll stay in bed. I promise.”

Thankfully, Emily’s authority has the desired effect and with some reluctance her team leave her. After they have gone, Emily allows herself to slump back against the pillows, closing her eyes and passing a hand over her face. More doctors descend on her then, asking her if there is any family for them to call, telling her that they’re rushing her down for a precautionary scan, adding note after note to her file. 

“You look pale,” the doctor who arrives from the maternity unit tells her, frowning down at her. 

“I’ve just been kidnapped and drugged. I think I’m entitled to be a bit off colour right now.”

She’s being rude, but the doctor is unmoved. “Is there anyone we can call?”

The only people they could call are already here, even though she has just sent them away. Emily knows that each and every one of them would come with her for this; all she needs to do is ask. There is a small part of her that would like to tell the doctor to call for JJ, who Emily knows would hold her hand and stay with her for as long as she needs. JJ who would do it all without any judgement, who would lend Emily some of her own iron strength when Emily can feel hers failing.  

But something tells Emily that this is something she needs to do alone. She cannot bear to admit that she might be having a baby, not when she has put herself in a situation where she might now lose this tiny, infinitely precious piece of her and Aaron. It could slip through her grip before she even has a chance to truly acknowledge it. It’s too much. Over the last few years, Emily has given up on the prospect of children, but now this has been dangled before her, and Emily wants it so desperately that it burns. It threatens to consume her. 

“No,” she says. “I’m fine. I don’t need anyone.”

Lie.

The person she needs is Aaron. 

Aaron, who would know what to do in this situation where the uncertainty and lack of control loom over her, threatening to pull her under. He would know what to say, would wrap his arms around her, press kisses to her forehead and whisper his reassurances low in her ear. Aaron, who is the one of the few people that Emily listens to, who is the only person who could take her hand and draw her back to safer waters.

Aaron, who should be the one to hear this news first.

But Aaron is gone.

Besides, even if Emily did know how to contact him, she isn’t sure how she would drop a bombshell of this magnitude on him. A baby is life changing. Something neither of them have discussed, conceived on a night where neither of them had dared to so much as consider what the future could hold. They’re not even together, for fuck’s sake. They haven’t been for years, not since Emily’s own demons drove her to the other side of the world. 

(Too late, much too late, alone in her hospital bed, Emily realises that if Aaron had asked, she would have come back. Not for the BAU, but for him. She would have done it in a heartbeat. Yet she also knows that he would never have asked that of her, for the same reason she wouldn’t have asked the same of him).

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Emily says as convincingly as she can. “I’m fine. I’m good.”

They insist on wheeling her down to the maternity unit and Emily doesn’t argue, mainly because she isn’t sure her legs would bear her weight. It seems to take a very long time to traverse the corridors, to be wheeled into the small room, for the doctor to set up the equipment. Finally, after what seems like hours, but in reality can’t be more than ten minutes, the doctor explains what she is going to do and what Emily should be expect as she lifts the hem of her crumpled, sweat-stained blouse, exposing the starburst scar that stands out against the creamy sweep of her midriff. 

Emily clings so tightly to the rail of the bed that her knuckles shine white through the skin. 

“Are you doing okay?” the doctor asks her gently. 

No. 

“I didn’t know,” Emily manages shakily, trying to stop the crippling fear from tearing her in half. “I’ve - I would have - I don’t know if it’s going to be alright. The baby, I mean. With the drugs and everything else.”

She hates how hard it is to admit this and hates how her voice wavers towards the end. Emily never, ever shows her fear, not if she can help it; she swallows it down, hides it so deep inside of her that it never sees the light of day. Today, this tactic isn’t working. There is something in the enormity of this situation and the responsibility she feels that brings her own terror out into the open, blinking in the harsh light of day, and the doctor is looking at her with sympathy. 

“I know you’ve had a tough time of it,” she says and Emily wants to laugh because, fuck, that is an understatement. “Which is why we’re here to take a little look. I do think you should know, however, that the drugs used on you will cause no lasting damage to either you or the baby.”

Emily doesn’t mean for her next question to come out so bluntly, but it does. “How do you know that? How can you be sure?” 

The doctor doesn’t even flinch from her tone. 

“Actually, Harvard and Brown both published extensive studies into the impact of a range of drugs on the early stages of pregnancy,” she says as Emily winces at the cold gel on her bare skin. “The drugs used on you were included in that study and they were found to have no impact whatsoever on the baby or the development, so in this respect I am confident that you will both be fine.”

It’s a step towards reassurance, but Emily is still rigid with tension, unable to let it drain from her until she can actually see some evidence of this, some proof that her baby is okay. The doctor swipes the wand across Emily’s as yet unchanged stomach, both of them waiting for something. Anything. 

It’s fine, Emily tells herself in a desperate attempt to make this situation seem less catastrophic. It’s just a clump of cells. Nothing more at this stage. 

She repeats it like a mantra, over and over again, as though thinking it enough will make it real. 

It doesn’t help. 

Each time she tries to distance herself from the prospect of an actual baby, solid and present in her arms, and visualise instead a tiny speck growing inside her, all she can think about it Aaron and the tiny life they have created together. It’s a piece of both of them, a blend of their traits both good and bad. To discover it only to possibly lose it is so overwhelming that Emily can’t even wrap her head around it. The panic is back, clawing at her throat, and Emily is about to go under completely when the doctor smiles and tilts the screen towards her. The image of her uterus is grainy but it still rips the air from her lungs. 

There, on the monitor, is her baby. Their baby.

“Heartbeat is good,” the doctor tells her with a smile. “The heart is fully formed and is beating at 180 per minute, which is exactly where it should be-“

Emily can’t look away. The doctor swoops the wand over Emily’s stomach again, still talking as Emily simply stares. Her grip on the bed rail loosens.

“We’re about the ten week mark here. At this stage, the baby is developing their jawbone, and their face is forming too.”

“They’re fine,” Emily says, choking on her own words. “They’re okay?”

“Everything looks good,” the doctor promises her. “They should be fine.”

Only when the doctor hands her a tissue does Emily realise there are tears streaming down her cheeks. It’s so wildly different from being fifteen and staring down at two lines on a drugstore pregnancy test that Emily can’t quite fathom it, that in both of these moments she was confronted with the same prospect. Back then, she was a kid herself, unable to even comprehend a future with a child, let alone see it as a baby. Then, it was a problem to solve. 

Now, the force of the love she feels for her unborn child hits her, fierce and uncompromising, and it knocks the wind from her. 

“I’m not a crier,” Emily says, even as she presses the tissue to stem the flow of tears. 

“It’s the hormones,” the doctor says wryly. 

When Emily is delivered back to her room with the scan image tucked in a paper envelope that she has to hide in her pocket, Rossi is waiting for her, clearly antsy.

“I came to see you and you’d gone,” he says as she is wheeled past him. “And they wouldn’t tell me where they’d taken you - they wouldn’t disclose your medical records.”

“They just wanted to check I was ok. And I am.”

“You’ve been crying,” he says, examining her closely, picking up on her red rimmed eyes and the tear tracks on her cheeks. 

“Wow, Rossi. You’re good at this profiling stuff.”

“Emily-“

“Don’t tell anyone. Please.”

Her vulnerability surprises them both. Dave eases himself into the chair by her bed and reaches for her hand, squeezing gently. 

“It’s been tough on us all, kid,” he says. “But we did good. You did it. Now, you need to rest.”

The question escapes from her before she can stop it, hopelessly small.

“Do you mind staying?”

If Dave is taken aback by her request, he doesn’t show it. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Not for the first time, Emily thanks her lucky stars for David Rossi.

Her mind is still racing too fast for her to even try to keep up with it. With her free hand, the one that is not wrapped in Dave’s palm, she dips her fingers beneath into her trouser pocket and stokes the edge of the envelope, reminding herself that the baby is fine. Just where they should be, the doctor had said. 

“Everything will be okay,” she says aloud, not sure if she’s telling herself, Dave or even the baby in her womb. 

“Everything is going to be fine,” Dave agrees, his familiar weathered face so certain that Emily almost believes him. 

She is too worked up to succumb to sleep, too consumed with the fact that it’s so terribly unfair. It should be Aaron at her side, stroking the back of her hand with his thumb as he promises her that she has nothing to worry about. They should be confronting this together, as a team. As a partnership.

It should be Aaron, she thinks bitterly, splaying her hand against her abdomen. He should be here.